While designing a website, it is important to understand and keep the audience profile in mind. Younger people are not interested in content and put more emphasis on graphics and videos.
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While designing a website, it is important to understand and keep the audience profile in mind. Younger people are not interested in content and put more emphasis on graphics and videos.
Though most webmasters feel it is mandatory, I do not use graphics and photographs on my website unless it is required. One of the reasons, is that I had a slow internet connection and the graphics would greatly increase the time taken to open a particular webpage.
Till a few years ago, for designing a basic website, some web design and HTML skills were needed or a website designer had to be hired. However, increasingly website owners are designing the website themselves using tools like website builders
Many of the website builders available today have a free version which can be used for building personal websites. For commercial users, an enhanced version is available on payment of a fixed fee, though some website builders charge users for annual upgrades.
Other free website builders are integrated with web hosting. The web hosting companies bundle it with the web hosting package and the website builder is not available separately.
Different types of software are used for designing a website, depending on the complexity and type of the website
Notepad
Microsoft Frontpage
Microsoft Publisher
CoffeeCup HTML Editor
Dreamweaver 8 – Used to code your site, free trial version available
Dreamweaver CS3(Dreamweaver 9)
Photoshop CS2 – for photos, images, modifying images
Fireworks 8 – Have never used, believe also 2d manipulation and style creation software
Flash 8 – For creating flash animation
GIMP – open source software for animation
Before starting web design, it is advisable to learn HTML. Basic HTML skills can be learnt quickly and there are many tutorials available to get you started.
Some of the online guides for HTML are :
W3schools – has video tutorials which can be useful
HTMLgoodies
WebMonkey
The online guides start from basic coding and then move on to more advanced web design.
Code for a website can also be written using notepad. Compared to web publishing tools, it is usually more difficult to write HTML code from scratch and it usually takes a longer time for the same type of website. However handcoded websites usually do not contain bloated code and load quickly. Once a person learns to write HTML code, it becomes easier to make modifications in existing websites.